


Care

by bri_ness



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Fluff, Gen, It's friendship but they're also gay so you know, Tea, Workplace, interpret as you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bri_ness/pseuds/bri_ness
Summary: Vilde shows Eva how to make the perfect cup of tea.





	Care

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I wrote this super quickly and there's no real...plot to speak of, but hopefully it's sweet? :) This fulfills the hot beverage prompt for the Evakteket Skamenger Hunt.

Everything requires care.

Vilde understands this better than anyone else—in her opinion, anyway. It serves her well: her skincare routine prevents pimples, her cleaning schedule keeps her apartment smelling like lavender, and her precision when measuring ensures her baking is absolutely perfect.

It’s also useful in what she knows will be her career: event planning. And with her first post-college, grown-up job as an administrative assistant at a wedding planning company, she is on her way. Sure, she’s not choosing dishware yet, but she’s sending samples to the client, ordering the chosen ones, storing them when they arrive—really, she’s holding the whole fucking wedding together.

On her morning break, for which she gets fifteen minutes but only takes thirteen, she devotes the same attention to making tea. It’s passionfruit green tea today, which means she needs to wait four minutes after the water boils before she steeps it. (Ideally, she’d have a thermometer to ensure the water’s at exactly 85 degrees, but the office kettle is not that high-tech).

As she waits, a woman Vilde recognizes as working in the same building comes in, staring at Vilde staring at the kettle.

“Uh,” she says. “Sorry, do you mind if I use some of that water?”

“Oh, of course!” Vilde says. She always fills the kettle to the top at work because she’s not a monster. She watches the woman pull a grocery-store-brand teabag out of her purse, lemon green tea, and she just can’t stop herself from saying, “It’ll be better if you wait for the water to cool down.”

“…Oh?”

“Yeah! Most people don’t know this, but you should steep different teas at different temperatures. Black teas, for example, can be very hot, but you should still wait about a minute after the water boils before you steep them.”

It’s only when she’s halfway through the second sentence that Vilde remembers most people don’t care the way she does, but the woman is smiling.

“I usually just settle for hot, but sure,” she says, leaning against the counter. “I am absolutely not in a rush to get back to work. I’m Eva, by the way. I’m in the call centre?”

Vilde nods: she has no idea what the call centre actually calls people _about_ , but she knows they always look miserable when she walks by their office. “Vilde. _Wonderful Weddings_.”

“Creative.”

Vilde smiles: when she owns the place, she’ll come up with a better name. “You know,” Eva says. “I have a friend who once made tea with warm tap water.”

Vilde has just enough self-awareness to realize a look of absolute horror is inappropriate, but it’s a struggle to keep her face neutral. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. But I mean, he didn’t grow up with parents who taught him how to…boil water, apparently.”

Neither did Vilde.

“It can go the other way,” Vilde says. “With parents like that. You have to learn how to do everything yourself.”

And to do it correctly, because Vilde’s mom never had it in her to care. It’s fine, though: Vilde’s learned how to do it for both of them.”

“I definitely know what that’s like.”

And maybe Vilde’s reading too much into things, because she tends to care more about other’s energies than they do their own, but she just gets a feeling of being understood. It’s even more soothing than the perfect cup of tea.

“I think it’s been four minutes,” Vilde says, scooping her own loose-leaf tea into her infuser. She pours the water in Eva’s mug first, then her own.

“I’m ready for the best tea of my life,” Eva says. “I don’t know how I’ll function tomorrow if you’re not here.”

“Well, if you’re going to take your break at the same time…”

“I can.”

“I can too.”

Eva smiles at her as she takes her mug back to her desk.

Everything requires care, but Vilde's rarely been on the receiving end of it. Maybe a friend is a place to start.


End file.
